FROM EMPEROR TO CITIZEN the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AISIN-GIORO PU YI
W.J.F. JENNER - TRANSLATOR
From COOK AND BAKERS BOOKS, PARKSVILLE, VANCOUVER ISLAND, BC, Canada
AbeBooks Seller Since August 6, 1999
Quantity: 1From COOK AND BAKERS BOOKS, PARKSVILLE, VANCOUVER ISLAND, BC, Canada
AbeBooks Seller Since August 6, 1999
Quantity: 1About this Item
Originally published in two-volume edition 1965, 1979. No dust jacket, maroon hard cover with gold embossed titles, ribbon marker, front paste-down is damaged at edge (perhaps a printer's defect) otherwise without flaw, clean and well bound. 6 X 8" 496 pages. From Emperor to Citizen is the Autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, born in Peking 1906. The closing paragraph reads: "'Man' was the first word I learnt to read in my first reader the Three Character Classic, but I had never understood its meaning before. Only today, with the Communist Party and the policy of remoulding criminals, have I learnt the significance of this magnificent word and become a real man." Illustrated throughout with glossy black/white photographs. Seller Inventory # 578651
Bibliographic Details
Title: FROM EMPEROR TO CITIZEN the AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF...
Publisher: Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, China
Publication Date: 1989
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Near Fine
About this title
In detailing the events of the fifty years between his ascension to the throne and the final period of his life as a quiet-living resident of Beijing. Pu Yi reveals himself to be first and foremost a survivor, caught up in the torrent of global power struggles and world conflict that played itself out on the Asian continent through many decades of violence and upheaval.
This firsthand description of the dramatic events of Pu Yi's life was the basis for the internationally acclaimed 1987 Bernardo Bertolucci film The Last Emperor which was named Best Picture of the Year by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. From Emperor to Citizen readily lends itself to cinematic adaptation as a personal narrative of continuously significant and revealing episodes.
Becoming emperor and then forced to abdicate with the establishment of the Republic of China in 1911, all before he is seven continues to live in Forbidden City for another decade still treated as the Son of Heaven by the moribund Ching court, but in reality a virtual prisoner, with little genuine human contact apart from his beloved nurse Mrs. Wang, his teacher Chen Pao-shen and his English tutor Reginald Johnston.
When at the age of nineteen Pu Yi is finally forced to vacate his isolated existence within the Forbidden City, he begins his long odyssey as the dependent of the occupying imperial Japanese regime, first in Tientsin, and eventually installed as "emperor" of the Japanese puppet state styled Manchukuo in China's northeast provinces. With the defeat of Japan and the end of the Second World War, Pu Yi faces a very uncertain future as he is shunted off to Russia for five years before returning to a new China transformed by revolution, where he is confined in the Fushun War Criminal Prison. Here he undergoes several years of rehabilitation, "learning how to become a human being," as he calls it, before receiving an official pardon and being allowed to finally live as an ordinary citizen of Beijing.
This autobiography is the culmination of a unique and remarkable life, told simply, directly and frankly by a man whose circumstances and experiences were like no other.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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